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A class of acyclic digraphs $\mathscr{C}$ is linearly unavoidable if there exists a constant $c$ such that every digraph $D\in \mathscr{C}$ is contained in all tournaments of order $c\cdot |V(D)|$. The class of all acyclic digraphs is not linearly avoidable, and Fox, He, and Widgerson recently showed that this is not even the case for acyclic digraphs with bounded maximum degree. On the positive side, Thomason and H\"aggkvist proved that the class of oriented trees is linearly unavoidable. In this work, we generalize this result to acyclic digraphs obtained from an oriented tree by adding at most $k$ vertices, and $k$-blow-ups of oriented trees, for every fixed integer $k$. More precisely, we show that if $D$ is obtained from an oriented tree $F$ of order $n$ by adding $k$ universal vertices, then $D$ is contained in every tournament of order $2\cdot 3^{(k+1)(2k+1)} \cdot n$; and if $D$ is obtained from $F$ by replacing each vertex $u$ by an independent set $X_u$ of size $k$ and every arc $uv$ by all possible arcs from $X_u$ to $X_v$, then $D$ is contained in every tournament of order $2^{10+18k}k \cdot n$.

Given a digraph, an ordering of its vertices defines a backedge graph, namely the undirected graph whose edges correspond to the arcs pointing backwards with respect to the order. The degreewidth of a digraph is the minimum over all ordering of the maximum degree of the backedge graph. We answer an open question by Keeney and Lokshtanov [WG 2024], proving that it is \NP-hard to determine whether an oriented graph has degreewidth at most $1$, which settles the last open case for oriented graphs. We complement this result with a general discussion on parameters defined using backedge graphs and their relations to classical parameters.

Let $D$ be a digraph. Its acyclic number $\vec{\alpha}(D)$ is the maximum order of an acyclic induced subdigraph and its dichromatic number $\vec{\chi}(D)$ is the least integer $k$ such that $V(D)$ can be partitioned into $k$ subsets inducing acyclic subdigraphs. We study ${\vec a}(n)$ and $\vec t(n)$ which are the minimum of $\vec\alpha(D)$ and the maximum of $\vec{\chi}(D)$, respectively, over all oriented triangle-free graphs of order $n$. For every $\epsilon>0$ and $n$ large enough, we show $(1/\sqrt{2} - \epsilon) \sqrt{n\log n} \leq \vec{a}(n) \leq \frac{107}{8} \sqrt n \log n$ and $\frac{8}{107} \sqrt n/\log n \leq \vec{t}(n) \leq (\sqrt 2 + \epsilon) \sqrt{n/\log n}$. We also construct an oriented triangle-free graph on 25 vertices with dichromatic number~3, and show that every oriented triangle-free graph of order at most 17 has dichromatic number at most 2., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures

Given a class of (undirected) graphs $\mathcal{C}$, we say that a Feedback Arc Set (FAS for short) $F$ is a $\mathcal{C}$-FAS if the graph induced by the edges of $F$ (forgetting their orientations) belongs to $\mathcal{C}$. We show that deciding if a tournament has a $\mathcal{C}$-FAS is NP-complete when $\mathcal{C}$ is the class of all forests. We are motivated by connections between $\mathcal{C}$-FAS and structural parameters of tournaments, such as the dichromatic number, the clique number of tournaments, and the strong Erd\H{o}s-Hajnal property.

We introduce the notion of clique number of a tournament and investigate its relation with the dichromatic number. In particular, it permits defining $\dic$-bounded classes of tournaments, which is the paper's main topic.

The dichromatic number $\vec\chi(D)$ of a digraph $D$ is the minimum size of a partition of its vertices into acyclic induced subgraphs. We denote by $\lambda(D)$ the maximum local edge connectivity of a digraph $D$. Neumann-Lara proved that for every digraph $D$, $\vec\chi(D) \leq \lambda(D) + 1$. In this paper, we characterize the digraphs $D$ for which $\vec\chi(D) = \lambda(D) + 1$. This generalizes an analogue result for undirected graph proved by Stiebitz and Toft as well as the directed version of Brooks' Theorem proved by Mohar. Along the way, we introduce a generalization of Haj\'os join that gives a new way to construct families of dicritical digraphs that is of independent interest., Comment: 34 pages, 11 figures

The dichromatic number of an oriented graph is the minimum size of a partition of its vertices into acyclic induced subdigraphs. We prove that oriented graphs with no induced directed path on six vertices and no triangle have bounded dichromatic number. This is one (small) step towards the general conjecture asserting that for every oriented tree T and every integer k, any oriented graph that does not contain an induced copy of T nor a clique of size k has dichromatic number at most some function of k and T., Comment: 9 pages. Thie version corrects some mistakes on page 2 in the introduction, we were incorrectly citing some of the previous papers on the topic

The dichromatic number $\vec{\chi}(G)$ of a digraph $G$ is the least integer $k$ such that $G$ can be partitioned into $k$ acyclic digraphs. A digraph is $k$-dicritical if $\vec{\chi}(G) = k$ and each proper subgraph $H$ of $G$ satisfies $\vec{\chi}(H) \leq k-1$. %An oriented graph is a digraph with no cycle of length $2$. We prove various bounds on the minimum number of arcs in a $k$-dicritical digraph, a structural result on $k$-dicritical digraphs and a result on list-dicolouring. We characterise $3$-dicritical digraphs $G$ with $(k-1)|V(G)| + 1$ arcs. For $k \geq 4$, we characterise $k$-dicritical digraphs $G$ on at least $k+1$ vertices and with $(k-1)|V(G)| + k-3$ arcs, generalising a result of Dirac. We prove that, for $k \geq 5$, every $k$-dicritical digraph $G$ has at least $(k-1/2 - 1/(k-1)) |V(G)| - k(1/2 - 1/(k-1))$ arcs, which is the best known lower bound. We prove that the number of connected components induced by the vertices of degree $2(k-1)$ of a $k$-dicritical digraph is at most the number of connected components in the rest of the digraph, generalising a result of Stiebitz. Finally, we generalise a Theorem of Thomassen on list-chromatic number of undirected graphs to list-dichromatic number of digraphs.

The dichromatic number $\dic(D)$ of a digraph $D$ is the least integer $k$ such that $D$ can be partitioned into $k$ directed acyclic digraphs. A digraph is $k$-dicritical if $\dic(D) = k$ and each proper subgraph $D'$ of $D$ satisfies $\dic(D') \leq k-1$. An oriented graph is a digraph with no directed cycle of length $2$. For integers $k$ and $n$, we denote by $o_k(n)$ the minimum number of edges of a $k$-critical oriented graph on $n$ vertices (with the convention $o_k(n)=+\infty$ if there is no $k$-dicritical oriented graph of order $n$). The main result of this paper is a proof that $o_3(n) \geq \frac{7n+2}{3}$ together with a construction witnessing that $o_3(n) \leq \left \lceil \frac{5n}{2} \right \rceil$ for all $n \geq 12$. We also give a construction showing that for all sufficiently large $n$ and all $k\geq 3$, $o_k(n) < (2k-3)n$, disproving a conjecture of Hoshino and Kawarabayashi. Finally, we prove that, for all $k\geq 2$, $o_k(n) \geq \pth{ k - \frac{3}{4}-\frac{1}{4k-6}} n + \frac{3}{4(2k-3)}$, improving the previous best known lower bound of Bang-Jensen, Bellitto, Schweser and Stiebitz.

The dichromatic number of a digraph is the minimum size of a partition of its vertices into acyclic induced subgraphs. Given a class of digraphs $\mathcal C$, a digraph $H$ is a hero in $\mc C$ if $H$-free digraphs of $\mathcal C$ have bounded dichromatic number. In a seminal paper, Berger at al. give a simple characterization of all heroes in tournaments. In this paper, we give a simple proof that heroes in quasi-transitive oriented graphs are the same as heroes in tournaments. We also prove that it is not the case in the class of oriented multipartite graphs, disproving a conjecture of Aboulker, Charbit and Naserasr. We also give a full characterisation of heroes in oriented complete multipartite graphs up to the status of a single tournament on $6$ vertices.

We characterize all digraphs $H$ such that orientations of chordal graphs with no induced copy of $H$ have bounded dichromatic number.

We show that digraphs with no transitive tournament on $3$ vertices and in which every induced directed cycle has length $3$ can have arbitrarily large dichromatic number. This answers to the negative a question of Carbonero, Hompe, Moore, and Spirkl (and extends some of their results).

We call a multigraph $(k,d)$-edge colourable if its edge set can be partitioned into $k$ subgraphs of maximum degree at most $d$ and denote as $\chi'_{d}(G)$ the minimum $k$ such that $G$ is $(k,d)$-edge colourable. We prove that for every integer $d$, every multigraph $G$ with maximum degree $\Delta$ is $(\lceil \frac{\Delta}{d} \rceil, d)$-edge colourable if $d$ is even and $(\lceil \frac{3\Delta - 1}{3d - 1} \rceil, d)$-edge colourable if $d$ is odd and these bounds are tight. We also prove that for every simple graph $G$, $\chi'_{d}(G) \in \{ \lceil \frac{\Delta}{d} \rceil, \lceil \frac{\Delta+1}{d} \rceil \}$ and characterize the values of $d$ and $\Delta$ for which it is NP-complete to compute $\chi'_d(G)$. These results generalize several classic results on the chromatic index of a graph by Shannon, Vizing, Holyer, Leven and Galil.

We give four new proofs of the directed version of Brook's Theorem and an NP-completeness result., Comment: 15 pages

A digraph is semicomplete if any two vertices are connected by at least one arc and is locally semicomplete if the out-neighbourhood and the in-neighbourhood of any vertex induce a semicomplete digraph. In this paper we study various subclasses of locally semicomplete digraphs for which we give structural decomposition theorems. As a consequence we obtain several applications, among which an answer to a conjecture of Naserasr and the first and third authors: if an oriented graph is such that the out-neighbourhood of every vertex induces a transitive tournament, then one can partition its vertex set into two acyclic digraphs., Comment: Nothing new in this version, which only corrected wrongly typed author names

In this paper, we give bounds on the dichromatic number $\vec{\chi}(\Sigma)$ of a surface $\Sigma$, which is the maximum dichromatic number of an oriented graph embeddable on $\Sigma$. We determine the asymptotic behaviour of $\vec{\chi}(\Sigma)$ by showing that there exist constants $a_1$ and $a_2$ such that, $a_1\frac{\sqrt{-c}}{\log(-c)} \leq \vec{\chi}(\Sigma) \leq a_2 \frac{\sqrt{-c}}{\log(-c)} $ for every surface $\Sigma$ with Euler characteristic $c\leq -2$. We then give more explicit bounds for some surfaces with high Euler characteristic. In particular, we show that the dichromatic numbers of the projective plane $\mathbb{N}_1$, the Klein bottle $\mathbb{N}_2$, the torus $\mathbb{S}_1$, and Dyck's surface $\mathbb{N}_3$ are all equal to $3$, and that the dichromatic numbers of the $5$-torus $\mathbb{S}_5$ and the $10$-cross surface $\mathbb{N}_{10}$ are equal to $4$. We also consider the complexity of deciding whether a given digraph or oriented graph embeddable on a fixed surface is $k$-dicolourable. In particular, we show that for any fixed surface, deciding whether a digraph embeddable on this surface is $2$-dicolourable is NP-complete, and that deciding whether a planar oriented graph is $2$-dicolourable is NP-complete unless all planar oriented graphs are $2$-dicolourable (which was conjectured by Neumann-Lara)., Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, improved asymptotic bounds

The dichromatic number of a digraph $D$ is the minimum number of colors needed to color its vertices in such a way that each color class induces an acyclic digraph. As it generalizes the notion of the chromatic number of graphs, it has been a recent center of study. In this work we look at possible extensions of Gy\'arf\'as-Sumner conjecture. More precisely, we propose as a conjecture a simple characterization of finite sets $\mathcal F$ of digraphs such that every oriented graph with sufficiently large dichromatic number must contain a member of $\mathcal F$ as an induce subdigraph. Among notable results, we prove that oriented triangle-free graphs without a directed path of length $3$ are $2$-colorable. If condition of "triangle-free" is replaced with "$K_4$-free", then we have an upper bound of $414$. We also show that an orientation of complete multipartite graph with no directed triangle is 2-colorable. To prove these results we introduce the notion of \emph{nice sets} that might be of independent interest.

The class of all even-hole-free graphs has unbounded tree-width, as it contains all complete graphs. Recently, a class of (even-hole, $K_4$)-free graphs was constructed, that still has unbounded tree-width [Sintiari and Trotignon, 2019]. The class has unbounded degree and contains arbitrarily large clique-minors. We ask whether this is necessary. We prove that for every graph $G$, if $G$ excludes a fixed graph $H$ as a minor, then $G$ either has small tree-width, or $G$ contains a large wall or the line graph of a large wall as induced subgraph. This can be seen as a strengthening of Robertson and Seymour's excluded grid theorem for the case of minor-free graphs. Our theorem implies that every class of even-hole-free graphs excluding a fixed graph as a minor has bounded tree-width. In fact, our theorem applies to a more general class: (theta, prism)-free graphs. This implies the known result that planar even hole-free graph have bounded tree-width [da Silva and Linhares Sales, Discrete Applied Mathematics 2010]. We conjecture that even-hole-free graphs of bounded degree have bounded tree-width. If true, this would mean that even-hole-freeness is testable in the bounded-degree graph model of property testing. We prove the conjecture for subcubic graphs and we give a bound on the tree-width of the class of (even hole, pyramid)-free graphs of degree at most 4.

A set of n points in the plane which are not all collinear defines at least n distinct lines. Chen and Chv\'atal conjectured in 2008 that a similar result can be achieved in the broader context of finite metric spaces. This conjecture remains open even for graph metrics. In this article we prove that graphs with no induced house nor induced cycle of length at least~5 verify the desired property. We focus on lines generated by vertices at distance at most 2, define a new notion of ``good pairs'' that might have application in larger families, and finally use a discharging technique to count lines in irreducible graphs., Comment: 16 pages

The first-fit coloring is a heuristic that assigns to each vertex, arriving in a specified order $\sigma$, the smallest available color. The problem Grundy Coloring asks how many colors are needed for the most adversarial vertex ordering $\sigma$, i.e., the maximum number of colors that the first-fit coloring requires over all possible vertex orderings. Since its inception by Grundy in 1939, Grundy Coloring has been examined for its structural and algorithmic aspects. A brute-force $f(k)n^{2^{k-1}}$-time algorithm for Grundy Coloring on general graphs is not difficult to obtain, where $k$ is the number of colors required by the most adversarial vertex ordering. It was asked several times whether the dependency on $k$ in the exponent of $n$ can be avoided or reduced, and its answer seemed elusive until now. We prove that Grundy Coloring is W[1]-hard and the brute-force algorithm is essentially optimal under the Exponential Time Hypothesis, thus settling this question by the negative. The key ingredient in our W[1]-hardness proof is to use so-called half-graphs as a building block to transmit a color from one vertex to another. Leveraging the half-graphs, we also prove that b-Chromatic Core is W[1]-hard, whose parameterized complexity was posed as an open question by Panolan et al. [JCSS '17]. A natural follow-up question is, how the parameterized complexity changes in the absence of (large) half-graphs. We establish fixed-parameter tractability on $K_{t,t}$-free graphs for b-Chromatic Core and Partial Grundy Coloring, making a step toward answering this question. The key combinatorial lemma underlying the tractability result might be of independent interest., Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures

We prove that for every $n$-vertex graph $G$, the extension complexity of the correlation polytope of $G$ is $2^{O(\mathrm{tw}(G) + \log n)}$, where $\mathrm{tw}(G)$ is the treewidth of $G$. Our main result is that this bound is tight for graphs contained in minor-closed classes., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures

This paper is concerned with efficiently coloring sparse graphs in the distributed setting with as few colors as possible. According to the celebrated Four Color Theorem, planar graphs can be colored with at most 4 colors, and the proof gives a (sequential) quadratic algorithm finding such a coloring. A natural problem is to improve this complexity in the distributed setting. Using the fact that planar graphs contain linearly many vertices of degree at most 6, Goldberg, Plotkin, and Shannon obtained a deterministic distributed algorithm coloring $n$-vertex planar graphs with 7 colors in $O(\log n)$ rounds. Here, we show how to color planar graphs with 6 colors in $\mbox{polylog}(n)$ rounds. Our algorithm indeed works more generally in the list-coloring setting and for sparse graphs (for such graphs we improve by at least one the number of colors resulting from an efficient algorithm of Barenboim and Elkin, at the expense of a slightly worst complexity). Our bounds on the number of colors turn out to be quite sharp in general. Among other results, we show that no distributed algorithm can color every $n$-vertex planar graph with 4 colors in $o(n)$ rounds., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures - An extended abstract of this work was presented at PODC'18 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)

Let $W_t$ denote the wheel on $t+1$ vertices. We prove that for every integer $t \geq 3$ there is a constant $c=c(t)$ such that for every integer $k\geq 1$ and every graph $G$, either $G$ has $k$ vertex-disjoint subgraphs each containing $W_t$ as minor, or there is a subset $X$ of at most $c k \log k$ vertices such that $G-X$ has no $W_t$ minor. This is best possible, up to the value of $c$. We conjecture that the result remains true more generally if we replace $W_t$ with any fixed planar graph $H$., Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure

In 1985, Mader conjectured the existence of a function $f$ such that every digraph with minimum out-degree at least $f(k)$ contains a subdivision of the transitive tournament of order $k$. This conjecture is still completely open, as the existence of $f(5)$ remains unknown. In this paper, we show that if $D$ is an oriented path, or an in-arborescence (i.e., a tree with all edges oriented towards the root) or the union of two directed paths from $x$ to $y$ and a directed path from $y$ to $x$, then every digraph with minimum out-degree large enough contains a subdivision of $D$. Additionally, we study Mader's conjecture considering another graph parameter. The dichromatic number of a digraph $D$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $D$ can be partitioned into $k$ acyclic subdigraphs. We show that any digraph with dichromatic number greater than $4^m (n-1)$ contains every digraph with $n$ vertices and $m$ arcs as a subdivision.

A well-known combinatorial theorem says that a set of n non-collinear points in the plane determines at least n distinct lines. Chen and Chv\'atal conjectured that this theorem extends to metric spaces, with an appropriated definition of line. In this work we prove a slightly stronger version of Chen and Chv\'atal conjecture for a family of graphs containing chordal graphs and distance-hereditary graphs.

A famous conjecture of Gy\'arf\'as and Sumner states for any tree $T$ and integer $k$, if the chromatic number of a graph is large enough, either the graph contains a clique of size $k$ or it contains $T$ as an induced subgraph. We discuss some results and open problems about extensions of this conjecture to oriented graphs. We conjecture that for every oriented star $S$ and integer $k$, if the chromatic number of a digraph is large enough, either the digraph contains a clique of size $k$ or it contains $S$ as an induced subgraph. As an evidence, we prove that for any oriented star $S$, every oriented graph with sufficiently large chromatic number contains either a transitive tournament of order $3$ or $S$ as an induced subdigraph. We then study for which sets ${\cal P}$ of orientations of $P_4$ (the path on four vertices) similar statements hold. We establish some positive and negative results., Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures

A graph $G$ has maximal local edge-connectivity $k$ if the maximum number of edge-disjoint paths between every pair of distinct vertices $x$ and $y$ is at most $k$. We prove Brooks-type theorems for $k$-connected graphs with maximal local edge-connectivity $k$, and for any graph with maximal local edge-connectivity 3. We also consider several related graph classes defined by constraints on connectivity. In particular, we show that there is a polynomial-time algorithm that, given a 3-connected graph $G$ with maximal local connectivity 3, outputs an optimal colouring for $G$. On the other hand, we prove, for $k \ge 3$, that $k$-colourability is NP-complete when restricted to minimally $k$-connected graphs, and 3-colourability is NP-complete when restricted to $(k-1)$-connected graphs with maximal local connectivity $k$. Finally, we consider a parameterization of $k$-colourability based on the number of vertices of degree at least $k+1$, and prove that, even when $k$ is part of the input, the corresponding parameterized problem is FPT., Comment: The latest version has minor corrections and clarifications

A classical theorem of De Bruijn and Erd\H{o}s asserts that any noncollinear set of n points in the plane determines at least n distinct lines. We prove that an analogue of this theorem holds for graphs. Restricting our attention to comparability graphs, we obtain a version of the De Bruijn-Erd\H{o}s theorem for partially ordered sets (posets). Moreover, in this case, we have an improved bound on the number of lines depending on the height of the poset. The extremal configurations are also determined.

A classic theorem of Euclidean geometry asserts that any noncollinear set of $n$ points in the plane determines at least $n$ distinct lines. Chen and Chv\'atal conjectured that this holds for an arbitrary finite metric space, with a certain natural definition of lines in a metric space. We prove that in any metric space with $n$ points, either there is a line containing all the points or there are at least $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ lines. This is the first polynomial lower bound on the number of lines in general finite metric spaces. In the more general setting of pseudometric betweenness, we prove a corresponding bound of $\Omega(n^{2/5})$ lines. When the metric space is induced by a connected graph, we prove that either there is a line containing all the points or there are $\Omega(n^{4/7})$ lines, improving the previous $\Omega(n^{2/7})$ bound. We also prove that the number of lines in an $n$-point metric space is at least $n / 5w$, where $w$ is the number of different distances in the space, and we give an $\Omega(n^{4/3})$ lower bound on the number of lines in metric spaces induced by graphs with constant diameter, as well as spaces where all the positive distances are from \{1, 2, 3\}., Comment: 20 pages

A special case of a theorem of De Bruijn and Erd\H{o}s asserts that any noncollinear set of $n$ points in the plane determines at least $n$ distinct lines. Chen and Chv\'atal conjectured a generalization of this result to arbitrary finite metric spaces, with a particular definition of lines in a metric space. We prove it for metric spaces induced by connected distance-hereditary graphs -- a graph $G$ is called distance-hereditary if the distance between two vertices $u$ and $v$ in any connected induced subgraph $H$ of $G$ is equal to the distance between $u$ and $v$ in $G$., Comment: 11 pages, 0 figures

A \emph{wheel} is a graph formed by a chordless cycle $C$ and a vertex $u$ not in $C$ that has at least three neighbors in $C$. We prove that every 3-connected planar graph that does not contain a wheel as an induced subgraph is either a line graph or has a clique cutset. We prove that every planar graph that does not contain a wheel as an induced subgraph is 3-colorable.

A wheel is a graph formed by a chordless cycle and a vertex that has at least three neighbors in the cycle. We prove that every 3-connected graph that does not contain a wheel as a subgraph is in fact minimally 3-connected. We give a new proof of a theorem of Thomassen and Toft: every graph that does not contain a wheel as a subgraph is 3-colorable., Comment: Unpublished

In [{Structural properties and decomposition of linear balanced matrices}, {\it Mathematical Programming}, 55:129--168, 1992], Conforti and Rao conjectured that every balanced bipartite graph contains an edge that is not the unique chord of a cycle. We prove this conjecture for balanced bipartite graphs that do not contain a cycle of length 4 (also known as linear balanced bipartite graphs), and for balanced bipartite graphs whose maximum degree is at most 3. We in fact obtain results for more general classes, namely linear balanceable and subcubic balanceable graphs. Additionally, we prove that cubic balanced graphs contain a pair of twins, a result that was conjectured by Morris, Spiga and Webb in [Balanced Cayley graphs and balanced planar graphs, {\it Discrete Mathematics}, 310:3228--3235, 2010].

We recall several known results about minimally 2-connected graphs, and show that they all follow from a decomposition theorem. Starting from an analogy with critically 2-connected graphs, we give structural characterizations of the classes of graphs that do not contain as a subgraph and as an induced subgraph, a cycle with a node that has at least two neighbors on the cycle. From these characterizations we get polynomial time recognition algorithms for these classes, as well as polynomial time algorithms for vertex-coloring and edge-coloring.

Chen and Chv\'atal introduced the notion of lines in hypergraphs; they proved that every 3-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices either has a line that consists of all $n$ vertices or else has at least $\log_2 n$ distinct lines. We improve this lower bound by a factor of $2-o(1)$.

We provide a general method to prove the existence and compute efficiently elimination orderings in graphs. Our method relies on several tools that were known before, but that were not put together so far: the algorithm LexBFS due to Rose, Tarjan and Lueker, one of its properties discovered by Berry and Bordat, and a local decomposition property of graphs discovered by Maffray, Trotignon and Vu\vskovi\'c. We use this method to prove the existence of elimination orderings in several classes of graphs, and to compute them in linear time. Some of the classes have already been studied, namely even-hole-free graphs, square-theta-free Berge graphs, universally signable graphs and wheel-free graphs. Some other classes are new. It turns out that all the classes that we study in this paper can be defined by excluding some of the so-called Truemper configurations. For several classes of graphs, we obtain directly bounds on the chromatic number, or fast algorithms for the maximum clique problem or the coloring problem.

A 4-wheel is a graph formed by a cycle C and a vertex not in C that has at least four neighbors in C. We prove that a graph G that does not contain a 4-wheel as a subgraph is 4-colorable and we describe some structural properties of such a graph.